Tuesday Tidbits

--Am I the only person who heard of the successful take-back of Timbuktu by the Mali and French armies and thought, I didn't realize that place still existed?  Perhaps the only educated person who would think such a thing.

--Robert Frost died 50 years ago today.  What would he make of today's poetry scene?  Like most of us, he'd probably be pleased with some of it and horrified at other aspects.

--I suspect that what horrified Robert Frost would not be what horrifies me.

--Of course, nothing really horrifies me about our current poetry scene.

--If you're contemplating an MFA in creative writing, you should read this post written by Leslie Pietrzyk, who teaches in both a traditional MFA program and a low-residency MFA program.

--When will seminaries adopt the low-residency model?

--The other night I had a dream, the kind of dream that if I believed that the universe speaks to us in the language of dreams, I'd know that I should go to seminary.

--I dreamed that I was looking for a bookstore, and I found it, and a woman handed me a book entitled Ordination.  For more on that dream and my rational brain's reaction to it, see this post.

--If I ever do go to seminary, I'll marvel at how long it took me to get the message.  Could God be more obvious?  Does God have to set my shrubbery ablaze to get my attention?

--Perhaps God speaks to us in books too.  This post talks about what I've been reading lately.  It includes this paragraph:  "I plan to spend the coming week-end rediscovering the works of Lauren Winner, Nora Gallagher, and my all-time favorite Kathleen Norris. I'm beginning serious work on crafting my own memoir, which will explore how a spiritual woman lives an integrated life staying true to her faith in a workplace that isn't always set up to support those ideals. I admire the work of these 3 women in so many ways. I plan to model my work on theirs, in that I want to write essays that can be read alone, or as a narrative in one gulp."

--Oh, how I long to be a Kathleen Norris for a next generation!  I think back to when I first read Norris' Dakota: A Spiritual Geography. I was so inspired, but dejected in a way. I thought, I'll never be able to do what she did. But blogging has helped immensely.


--I've gotten many a compliment as a writer, along with rejections, of course. But the one that means the most to me is the one where people say my work reminds them of Kathleen Norris.